Metaphor Detection

Metaphors are an inherent and important component of natural language, requiring a comprehensive awareness of cultural norms. The Autonomous Dynamic Analysis of Metaphor and Analogy (ADAMA) Project combines big data and sophisticated linguistic analysis to understand and automate the detection of metaphors in several languages.

The project is funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a research arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence via the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, who dedicated $1.4 million to the program in it’s first year.

The ADAMA project, led by IIT Professor of Computer Science Shlomo Argamon, is developing a software system capable of identifying and understanding metaphors in 4 languages: English, Farsi, Russian and Mexican Spanish. The projects uses very large amounts of data gathered from the Internet and other open sources then analyzed by both human and computational methods.

The ADAMA software system, including its assessment process, will be adaptable to different social science application areas, and, if proven successful, will significantly advance scientific understanding of the relationship between language and culture.